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Popular gay author picks over the movies
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F loyd S klaver
ennis Hensley loves to trash the movies.
And, using his new hook, Screening Party,
which has been nominated for a Lambda
Literary Award in Humor, now you can too.
W hat’s more, on April 24 the handsome,
38-year-old celebrity profiler and author will
share the art of movie mockery during a read­
ing at the Lloyd C enter Barnes & Noble.
Hensley grew up in Holbrook, a town of
5,000 located in eastern Arizona. It had only
one movie theater, he recalls, “and half of the
time it was closed.” Yet popular culture provid­
ed an escape, and Hensley became enamored of
celebrity and fame.
“Television was a window into outside
things,” he says. “It stimulated my imagination
and made me want to go beyond where I was.”
It also helped him understand his sexuali­
ty. “As a gay person, it connected me,” the
single author says. “N o one {in Holbrook]
wanted to feather their hair and grab
onto the hack of a car riding a skate­
board like Farrah Fawcett. There wasn’t
fabulousness around me, hut there was
on television and in the movies.”
After college the star-struck young man
moved to Los Angeles, where his first job
was "ushering eager audiences into tapings
for such shows as She’s the Sheriff with
Suzanne Somers.” A year later he
landed a job as a singer/
dancer with Princess
Cruises, where he
performed in “many
musical extravagan­
zas with exclama­
tions points in
their titles.”
In 1990
Hensley sold
his first story,
an account of
his harrowing
dance audi-
tion for M adonna’s Blonde Ambition tour titled
“Confessions of a Boy Toy W annabe.” A new
career was bom, and he’s since written count­
less celebrity profiles for The Advocate, Out, In
Style, T V Guide, Us and Cosmopolitan.
Screening Party is Hensley’s second bnx)k. His
first, Misadventures in the (213), evolved from a
series of fiction columns he wrote for Detour.
H ie htx)k wound up on the Los Angeles Times
best-seller list, and the ensuing publicity landed
the author on The Rosie O'Dcmnell Shew.
Hensley also co-wrote, co-directed and co-
starred in Evie Harris: Shining Star, a 13-minute
film about a has-been actress trying to locate
her star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. T he
riotous comedy played at queer film festivals
around the country.
| ince moving to Hollywood,
Hensley has “tried to populate
my world with people who like
to say things about what they see
on television— people who ask
questions, make observations,
offer fashion commentary and
occasionally crack wise.” Many of
them became part of his inner cir­
cle of friends who would come over
to watch TV together, including
movies, pageants, award shows
and American Idol.
W h en one o f his
editors requested an
article celebrating
the 25th anniver­
sary o f Jaws,
which Hensley
had never seen,
he asked if he
could watch it
w ith friends
and then write
about the
experience of
seeing it for
the first time.
“It was sort of
an experim ent,”
he explains, but
he knew his
friends “could
deliver in the
funny departm ent